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In my Doom info post from Saturday, I incorrectly stated that Jean Paul would be working on the AI for the game. I obviously misheard what John Carmack said, but id's Jim Dose let me know that he is currently working on the AI as well as the animation system and game code. Jan Paul is currently not done with school, but when he does, he will be doing physics and collision detection work on the game. Jim said he will be using Jean Paul's area based navigation system that was used for Quake 3 because he feels that it "beats anyone's path-node based navigation hands down". He adds that the AI system in the game now is brand new however.

A couple of bits from The Carmack for you guys. Firstly Last week I put together a little list of things about DOOM that Carmack had mentioned during his QuakeCon talk.. He mentioned the models being 250,000 polys which sounded.... high. Well I got a clarification from the man on that one real quick:

"The actual rendered characters are quite low polygon count, but the modelers build very high detail (250k+ polys) versions that are processed by utilities to generate some of the data."

While we're talking Carmack, he also made a post on "slashdot" talking about misc other things. This should amuse you college graduate types:

"None of us had degrees in computer science. Romero, Adrian, and I don't have any degrees at all, and Kevin's is in political science."

Oh yeah, and no DOOM video releases are planned from the showing at QuakeCon. Doh?

For those who don't want to bother downloading the videos, here's IvyMike's take (Stomped reader):

Short summary: Things are going to kick ass.

Longer summary: The major theme Carmack kept stressing was, "Generalized". It sounds like the entire game will work under the same standard rendering model.

Carmack mentioned that the networking code hasn't been addressed at all, but that he doesn't expect modem users to be able to play in any large player count games. (He specifically said modem players would probably be ok in one-on-one).

He also mentioned that he's not concentrating on the multi-player aspect yet. The game will have multi-player, but he emphasized that the single-player experience will rule, and no compromises will be made in the game in order to support multi-player. (In other words, all technical decisions on what goes in are determined by what works under single player.)

The funniest parts of the interview were when random conference attendees walk into the room, realize that they're not supposed to be there, and close the door with a sheepish look on their face.

P.S. There's no reason to watch these videos at any high quality level; all the content (except for the random dudes) is audio.

Update 2:

Another take on the videos from myiron
lung (Stomped reader :):

What I found interesting is that the bare minimum for graphics cards is going to be a geforce 1/radeon. I was under the assumption until now that he was going to cut out anything below geforce3 level accelerators.

At first I was somewhat confused but after hearing him talk about how the renderer works, I understood his reasoning.

Instead of using the gf3's pixel and vertex shaders, he is using dot3 bump mapping and stencil shadows. Of course, he's going to enhance the visual quality and performance on more powerful accelerators by writing a card-specific back-end, so anyone using a gf1 will have the same end result but it might look better and run faster on newer hardware. Slick.

Another interesting point was the question (If I heard it correctly, get that interviewer a second mic) on deformable geometry. One of my major annoyances with red faction, and now it's understandable. It's visually very ugly when you rip a hole through a wall or the ground and see some horribly stretched texture repeated over every new surface. This is something that could definitely use a little more work. (Anyone else mad that the glass house in the test level doesn't fall when all of it's support has been removed? What happened to the talk of advanced physics? pfff)

One of the reasons I am a fan of id engines is the clean and efficient code. Hearing him talk about how he is attempting to optimize geometry and discard redundant lighting operations is cool, even if I don't have a damn clue about the math and programming involved. Unless it has to do with cin or cout ;)

Another take on the interview, this time from disembodied potato (Shacknews reader):

Part 1/2

Heres a little write up of what was said and discussed in the interview for anyone who cant be arsed watching it all.

Video#1/2

Carmack explains his dislike for specific graphic effects or "special effects" which video board companys incorporate into hardware for use in a single instances. He prefers to instead, have a consistant level of graphic quality. So instead of displaying every different graphical "gimmick" possible, he'd much rather apply the same effect to everthing on screen, not just specific objects for a one hit wow factor. He says the next engine brings about a new standard of visuals. The kind of visuals everyone has been expecting for years, yet not in a superficious manner. The graphical prowess of the doom 3 engine is about addressing the fundamentals involved. Namely lighting, and how the lighting interacts not only with the enviroment but with the players and the models inside the game world. He goes onto explain how exactly this is done, and why this has never been attempted in previous incarnations of Id's engines. He also notes the difference between the ammount of passes required on a typical gefore 1/2 card to that of the new ATi card or Geforce3. Next he describes why with the great growth in visual technology means the pace of gameplay will have to change accordingly, atleast for games trying to acheive an atmospheric, realistic game. In otherwords no more players running around at 90mph. He also notes that he hopes not all games will follow the path of doom, some will stick with less realistic or cartoony rendering, to provide different types of gameplay. Suprisingly he mentions the Xbox has a rendering power twice that of a standard geforce3. He makes it clear how early on in development quake 4 is, and what may apply to doom3 most certainly wont to quake4, for example player speeds and the focus on atmosphere and enviroments.

Part 2/2

Video#3/4

Questioned about interaction with the enviroment, carmack explains how most of dooms interaction will be closley scripted and controlled, keeping atmosphere high is a clear priority. He goes on to say that the deformable eviroment technology found in Red Faction, however impressive, isn't likley to catch on. It was a possibility back in the days of Classic quake when enviroments were so basic , players carving their own path wouldnt cause to many problems. But In modern games it causes more problems than benefits, and usualy destroys the hardwork artists and mappers put into creating specific imagery. Next he points out how id have literaly bowed out of exploring how to further realistic human behavior in computer games for Doom Fell that its a very difficult area to delve into that doesn't really run paralel to his current work. However Valve are working hard on developing realistic humans in computer games for there new games. Next he makes it clear that networking really isnt a priority in the current project. Unlike all other Id projects where the single player was goverened and in many cases restricted by what was and wasn't possible in multiplayer, this wont be the case with doom. Single player is undoubtably the focus, and they won't allow it to be "hobbled" by multiplayer at this stage. However he makes it clear there will be an online aspect, its clearly an after thought at this point. However he does feel when networking is adressed it will need to be reworked in some shape or form. The fundamental's of the Doom engine were infact, in place just before the TA mission pack shipped, since then its been a case of adding better features and making it run smoother and smoother. The interviewer goes on to ask what have been real challenges for him latley. Carmack responds modestly, explaining the most difficult issues are problem solving ones, problems with floating point accuracies thanks to the now more complicated enviroments were mentioned. He also makes note of the difficulties optimising exactly how the shadow system works in order not to waste valuable processing power on calculations that would remain invisable to the player anyway. "Curved Surfaces were always over rated" Could become a famous carmack quote, he explains despite the new engine and rapidly improving hardware the team still have to be sensible when it comes to detailed geometry, and that going overboard isnt an option.Finaly he points out that Doom 3 tech isn't an evouloution of the quake 3 engine, this is the biggest fresh start in Id engines since the Doom2 -> transition.

Thats about it. Sorry for poor spelling/grammar i wrote this in a rush.

Update 5:

Taken from Shacknews:

idealego REALPLAYER

If you're using Linux and their shitty way of presenting the videos isn't working for you, run realplayer, click open location and use these direct realplayer links:

Any easy way to record just the sound in windows is with this program:
http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/TotalRecorder/

I just tried it, the only thing I had to do was turn on volume normalization otherwise I could barely hear it. I saved it as a wav file, converted it to an mp3 and now I have a super small copy of the interview with decent sound quality.

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I'm ripping the audio stream to MP3 right now. If you guys are interested, I can put it up later today. I'm also looking into ripping some older streaming stuff, like TechTV's QuakeCon interviews from 1999 and 2000.

And yes, I'm still planning to write down Carmack's QuakeCon speech once it's online (Wednesday, probably). Not necessarily all of it though - unless someone feels like lending a hand.

I've probably spent close to a hundred hours listening to Carmack's voice. And I've even caught myself using typical "Carmack-esque" expressions while speaking English. Oh, the HORROR ! :)

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OK, I'm no Carmack/Zaldron but in this interview, he did say Radeon is able to do most of the lighting stuff in one rendering pass, whereas GeForce3 takes two or three. Carmack isn't just developing for GF3 and ignoring all other architectures: he has even chosen not to include a feature or two, so it would still run on GeForce256 cards.

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Well, at least this tells you that Doom3 will be the best game when it gets out. They are working ever so hard.. CG Quality GFX, campatability for mostly every video card out, highest quality sound, prefect music {Carmack said himself, it to be more ambient than the last two games, yet, not to worry about not being able to hear all of the sounds}.. And one of the things that made me really happy was, "And an intro sequence much like QuakeII's.." I loved that movie, and I hope DoomIII's is nice and LOOONG. I just cant wait. A good job they are doing...